“This latest expansion to our long-term wafer supply agreement with Cree will continue to contribute to the flexibility of our global silicon carbide substrate supply,” says ST CEO Jean-Marc Chery (pictured) “it will continue to contribute importantly to our global silicon carbide supply, complementing the other external capacity we have secured and the internal capacity we are ramping. The agreement will help meet the high volumes required by our product manufacturing operations in the next years, with a large number of automotive and industrial customer programs in high volumes or ramping up.”
The adoption of SiC power ICs is growing in the automotive market, enabling greater system efficiencies that result in EVs with longer range and faster charging with reduced cost, weight and size.
In the industrial market, SiC chips enable smaller, lighter and more cost-effective designs, converting energy more efficiently to deliver new clean energy applications.
To better support these growing markets, device manufacturers are interested in securing access to SiC substrates.
“Our long-term wafer supply agreements with device manufacturers now total more than $1.3 billion and help support our efforts to drive the industry transition from silicon to silicon carbide,” says Cree CEO Gregg Lowe, ‘our partnerships and significant investments in increased production capacity ensure we are well positioned to capitalize on what we believe to be is a multi-decade growth opportunity for silicon carbide-based applications.”